The Obama administration pursued a policy in Libya back in 2011 that ultimately allowed guns to walk into the hands of jihadists linked to the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) and al-Qaeda (AQ) in Syria, according to a former CIA officer who co-authored a report on behalf of the Citizen’s Commission on Benghazi (CCB), detailing the gun running scheme.

In Congress, the then-bipartisan group known as the “Gang of Eight,” at a minimum, knew of the operation to aid and abet America’s jihadist enemies by providing them with material support. So says Clare Lopez, a former CIA officer and the primary author of CCB’s interim report, titled How America Switched Sides in the War on Terror, speaking with Breitbart News. . .

“The Obama administration effectively switched sides in what used to be called the Global War on Terror [GWOT] when it decided to overthrow the sovereign government of our Libyan ally, Muammar Qaddafi, who’d been helping in the fight against al-Qaeda, by actually teaming up with and facilitating gun-running to Libyan al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood [MB] elements there in 2011,” explained Lopez. “This U.S. gun-running policy in 2011 during the Libyan revolution was directed by [then] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and [the late Libya Ambassador] Christopher Stevens, who was her official envoy to the Libyan AQ rebels.”

To avoid having the funds tracked back to the Obama administration, the arms flow to Libya was financed thru the United Arab Emirates, while Qatar served as the logistical and shipping hub, she noted.

“In 2012, the gun-running into Libya turned around and began to flow outward, from Benghazi to the AQ-and-MB-dominated rebels in Syria,” Lopez added. “This time, it was the CIA Base of Operations that was in charge of collecting up and shipping out [surface-to-air missiles] SAMs from Libya on Libyan ships to Turkey for overland delivery to a variety of jihadist militias, some of whose members later coalesced into groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS [also known as IS]. . .”

“The reason the U.S. government was operating in Libya is absolutely critical to this debacle because it reflects where America went off the tracks and literally switched sides in the GWOT,” points out Lopez. “This is about who we are as a country, as a people — where we are going with this Republic of ours.”

“There can be no greater treason than aiding and abetting the jihadist enemy in time of war – or providing material – weapons, funding, intel, NATO bombing – support to terrorism,” she continued. “The reason Benghazi is not the burning issue it ought to be is because so many at top levels of U.S. government were implicated in wrong-doing: White House, Pentagon, Intel Community-CIA, Gang of Eight, at a minimum, in Congress, the Department of State, etc. . .”

"Our rights are trampled. Our money is confiscated to the extent that nearly half our labor is devoted to funding a government that is incompetent at every basic task besides oppression. Our contributions to society are belittled, as if the welfare-sucking losers living on Democrat handouts built this country instead of us. This is unjust. This is wrong. And this will not last. Where there is no justice, there will be no peace. Trump is only the harbinger of a much deeper anger, and a fully justified one. It cannot continue; the status quo is not static, and injustice will create a reaction. Upheaval is coming, and chaos looms if we stay this course. It’s not too late to fundamentally transform back into a just society, but that would take a real leader. And right now, we don’t have one."

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Dropped by this morning after early church following up on an Academy Sports ad that offered 50 round boxes of .22 Long Rifle ammunition for a little over $2.00 per box (limit ten). The counter help didn't have any and indeed hadn't heard that there was an ad in Sunday's paper. Oops. They looked around and discovered that they not only didn't have any stock, but that the only store in the Southeast region that did was located in New Orleans. Oops. Told them that it was a good thing that I was a good-natured fellow and coming fresh from church. They agreed. I also told them that their weekend was going to be a living hell when folks less patient than myself began to shout at them for failing to have an advertised product. They also agreed with that. The next stock truck isn't until Tuesday morning. Poor so-and-sos are going to have a rough couple of days. They were cussing the marketing department when I left.

"Recently I wrote about a suit challenging the law in Arizona – a state that’s very friendly towards the abomination called civil asset forfeiture. There, innocent people who have had their property stolen by public officials have to worry that if they fight to get it returned and lose the case, the government will force them to pay out additional money to cover its legal costs in fending off their claims. Across the state line in New Mexico, a different but equally vexing legal situation prevails. Back in summer, the state legislature unanimously passed a bill that defangs the civil asset forfeiture viper and Governor Martinez promptly signed it into law. Amazingly, however, civil asset forfeiture continues in New Mexico, as officials in Albuquerque and other cities scoff at the law."

"True to form, and consistent with Rahm Emanuel’s advocacy to never let a serious crisis go to waste, citizen disarmament swindlers and other totalitarian lobby shills have taken to social and 'regular' media to lay blame for Friday’s Colorado Planned Parenthood murders on groups that stand in the way of their goals. Those include gun owners, right to life activists, Republicans, Christians, white males, and others 'progressives' view as impediments and threats to their objective of total control. That’s typical collectivist thinking. Blame a group you want to marginalize and demonize for the actions of a misfit aberration, and draw fraudulent generalized conclusions from which to infringe on rights and increase the state’s control."

So rather than a right-winger, he's a collectivist that swings both ways? Or maybe he's just a nutburger. To use the Washington Post headline about Aryan Republican Army terrorist and bankrobber Pete Langan: He's a "cross-dressing, transsexual neo-Nazi bank robber (and one confused human being)."

If you're not a hunter or a target shooter, it's nearly impossible to buy a gun legally in France. But the country's strict gun control laws are not enough to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of Islamist militants. Gaps in the current laws, light sentences, and the absence of a European agency like the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), with its billion-dollar budget and thousands of agents, are the main problems facing France and its neighbors as they focus on tackling gun trafficking in the wake of the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, experts said.

"You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory." -- Thomas Wolfe, in You Can't Go Home Again.

Did I mention that a number of Buckeyes who I encountered (although it would be more accurate to say -- who attempted to run into me) in addition to having particularly nasty and ill-mannered dispositions during this holiday for giving thanks, are accomplished kamikazes with all vehicles ranging from shopping carts to automobiles? Darn near killed me more than once, and gave me the finger as they passed. Sheesh. And to think I was raised among that tribe. I guess it was my fault for venturing out shopping on Thursday and "Black Friday." I was just asking for it.

Friday, November 27, 2015

. . . and am restricted to using a library computer. I'll try to have more tomorrow, after my return, but for now I'm coming off the chemo med for two weeks and it is kicking my butt both ways. Go figure. Good thing Rosey is driving.

The other day, on the way back from the oncologist, I dropped by one of the local thrift stores and spotted this: With Fire and Sword by the Polish novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz. (Pronounced "sin-KAY-vitch.") I had never heard of Sienkiewicz, I thought, until I noticed from the book cover that he had written Quo Vadis. But it was the description of With Fire and Sword as Volume One of "THE Polish epic historical series" that piqued my interest. I could, I thought, risk a dollar on it. Sienkiewicz' writing is stunning. He had me with this description of the steppes on page two:

Such were these Wild Lands: a continent of grass stamped with savage beauty. Billowing pastures where a mounted man could vanish like a diver in a lake. Violent chasms torn out of the earth, gaunt breastworks of crumbling clay and limestone that opened without warning under a horse's hooves. A wilderness of forest, fallen timbers, sudden glittering lakes and rivers exploding into cataracts. . .

It was a land as vast as all of Western Europe, subject in name to the dominion of the Crown of Poland but, in effect, belonging only to those who lived by claw, fleet foot, and arrows shot out of ambush in the night. The Tartars grazed their horses there by treaty permission; and Cossack horse-thieves turned these pastures into battlefields where the sounds of slaughter, the screams of dying men, the drumming of hooves galloping out of ambush, the clash of steel, and the hiss of the Tartar arrow and the whirling lariat seemed to hang forever on the wind, carried from unknown beginnings into an endless future like the Steppe itself.

No one knew how many battles were fought there in the years gone by, nor how many men left their bones scattered in the Steppe for the wolves and vultures. Armed travelers who heard the whirring of great wings, or saw the black swarms of carrion birds wheeling in the sky, knew at once that corpses or bleached bones lay somewhere ahead and looked to their weapons. Men hunted each other in this menacing green sea with no more feeling than they'd have running down a hare; everyone there was both the hunter and the prey. This was the immemorial home of outlaws hiding from the law and the hangman's rope. Armed shepherds -- as savage as their untamed flocks and herds -- guarded lean sheep, fierce stallions and wild cattle. Bandits sought loot. Cossacks trailed Tartars and Tartars hunted Cossacks. It was common practice for entire vatahas of light cavalry to guard the immense horseherds while raiding marauders came a thousand strong; and all of them, no matter whom they served, were men for whom words like gentleness and mercy had never held a meaning.

The Steppes were wholly desolate and unpeople yet filled with living menace. Silent and still seething with hidden violence, peaceful in their immensity yet infinitely dangerous, these boundless spaces were a masterless, untamed country created for ruthless men who acknowledged no one as their overlord.

This one was forwarded to me by a faithful reader with the comment: "Useful information for those of us that still think that all long term battery technology involves lead plates and acid electrolytes. If you plan on humping comm. radios, using "hobby" security drones, or other high energy draw items you need to learn about LiPo batteries. They have some real advantages, but they can cause trouble, too."

I had to stop by WalMart to pick up some medicine yesterday morning and out of idle curiosity I stopped by the sporting goods department where an employee was putting up the latest restock. Lo, and behold, what did I spot but a single cardboard box containing 2 1000-rd bulk packs of Winchester M-22 .22LR ammo! I had the fellow unbox and scan them and they were $49.95 each. That's the first time in darn near a year that I've seen bulk pack .22 ammo at a decent price. With the local tax, they would have been five and a half cents a round. I'm sure someone scarfed them up quickly.

This is further proof of Dr. Richter's dictum as expressed to me that the left-right graph of the political continuum is a lie taught by collectivists to make you think that there is some legitimacy to their respective positions whereas the truth is that they are two sides of the same murderous coin. They are simply, in his words, "two bands of cannibals fighting over who gets to eat your corpse."

We have come here tonight to add our celebration to those which are going forward all over the world wherever allied troops are fighting, in bivouacs and dug-outs, on battlefields, on the high seas, and the highest air. Always this annual festival has been dear to the hearts of the American people. Always there has been that desire for thanksgiving, and never, I think, has there been more justification, more compulsive need than now.

It is your Day of Thanksgiving, and when we feel the truth of the facts which are before us, that in three or four years the peaceful, peace-loving people of the United States, with all the variety and freedom of their life in such contrast to the iron discipline which has governed many other communities — when we see that in three or four years the United States has in sober fact become the greatest military, naval, and air power in the world — that, I say to you in this time of war, is itself a subject for profound thanksgiving.

We are moving forward in this struggle which spreads over all the lands and all the oceans; we are moving forward surely, steadily, irresistibly, and perhaps with God’s aid, swiftly, towards victorious peace. There again is a fitting reason for thanksgiving.

I have spoken of American thanksgiving. Tonight here, representing vaster audiences and greater forces moving outside this hall, it is both British and American thanksgiving that we may celebrate. And why is that? It is because under the compulsion of mysterious and all-powerful destiny we are together. We are joined together, shedding our blood side by side, struggling for the same ideals,
until the triumph of the great causes which we serve shall have been made manifest.

But there is a greater Thanksgiving Day which still shines ahead, which beckons the bold and loyal and warm-hearted, and that is when this union of action which has been
forced upon us by out common hatred of tyranny, which we have maintained during
these dark and fearful days, shall become a lasting union of sympathy and good-feeling
and loyalty and hope between all the British and American peoples, wherever they may
dwell. Then, indeed, there will be a Day of Thanksgiving and one in which all the world shall share.”

Ben Carson, a GOP presidential hopeful, has stepped into the controversy over suggestions by rival Donald Trump that all Muslmis in American should be monitored. According to the Associated Press, Dr Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who is running strongly in the polls, would go even further.

"What I have said is that I would be in favor of monitoring a mosque or any church or any organization or any school or any press corps where there was a lot of radicalization and things that were anti-American."

The present regime considers me to be "radical" and (doubtless) my church to be "anti-American." The lesbian mayor of Houston considers it perfectly acceptable to subpoena the sermons of Christian pastors that she considers "anti-American." So where, Dr. Carson, do you start with FBI and NSA spying on the American people and where do you end it?

Now, admittedly this is a BRITISH list, so coming from a herd of self-gelded sheeple you can understand why armed self-defense isn't on the list. Indeed, this is embracing a Monty Python strategy for dealing with Jihadi murderers: "Run away! Run away!" Still, if the Americans on the French train had followed these rules they and a lot of other passengers would have died and the Jihadi perp would have succeeded.

The Most Rev Justin Welby has admitted hat the brutal attacks had put a "chink in his armour" as he reacted with profound sadness to the Paris attacks. He told BBC Songs Of Praise:

"Yes. Saturday morning - I was out and as I was walking I was praying and saying: 'God why - why is this happening? Where are you in all this?' and then engaging and talking to God. Yes, I doubt."

Of course the Church of England has increasingly resembled something that the Dutch-American historian Hendrik Willem Van Loon once said about the Unitarians. He quipped that the Unitarian Church appealed to him "because the only time the name Jesus Christ is uttered is when the janitor falls downstairs."

"There Are None So Blind As Those Who Will Not See" -- According to the ‘Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings’ this proverb has been traced back to 1546 (John Heywood), and resembles the Biblical verse Jeremiah 5:21 (‘Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not’). In 1738 it was used by Jonathan Swift in his ‘Polite Conversation’ and is first attested in the United States in the 1713 ‘Works of Thomas Chalkley’. The full saying is: ‘There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know’.

Subject: Re: "We will not forget those who solicited our deaths and the deaths of our families. We will not forget and history will not forgive."

What is it with this collectivist nonsense? Yours is the second letter with that charge in it. I'm a businessperson who has never relied on the government, a capitalist who believes in the profit motive.

I am a gun owner who wants to find the right balance between protecting our Second Amendment rights and arming criminals (something you have proposed nothing to stop). That's all.

No one knows how our founding fathers would have treated background checks. Both communications technology and arms technology have developed in ways they could not imagine, so do don't claim their legacy.

Your paragraph about the military actually proved my point. You nor I could stand up to them. Yes they are our sons and daughters. And they will obey lawful orders and are duty bound to disobey illegal ones.

Of course, now that the US Secret Service is handling the Donald's security, you can (according to local teevee) forget about concealed carrying in the rally. No firearms, no knives, no sharp objects, no frowning, arched eyebrows or bad attitudes. He may be "all about the Second amendment," but his federal handlers ain't. In fact they're warning folks to expect "security measures like you would see at the Atlanta airport" and to leave any large purses or backpacks at home. One local Trump supporter actually warned on talk radio not to "look furtive or guilty" so you won't be detained by the federales. Although they are now saying that the doors will open at 8:30 AM, they are also saying to expect to spend long times standing outside in the cold because "the Secret Service is going to be searching everybody." This is said to be required because of the ISIS attack in Paris. "They'll be looking for suicide vests," it is said. Parking is also non-existent downtown at the best of times and unless you want to park in the feral hunting grounds of gangbangers close by the venue, you are limited to paying $8 to $10 to park in one of the notoriously insecure parking garages run by the equally notorious and corrupt local authorities. Freezing my testicles off while standing in line for hours on my bum knee and then getting groped while acting as a bit-part stand-in for some kabuki theater dedicated to "our collective security" is not something I am willing to endure just to get a look at the Donald and his supporters up close. Rosey wisely concurs. You may conclude from that that I am not a Trump fan and you would be right.

Instead, we are going to go pick up brass at the local range and maybe take in a couple of yard sales where I can buy some small items we can turn on EBay for fundraising. At least we won't suffer the indignity of being groped by tax feeders and we can retreat to the warm car at our leisure. Sorry, Donald, you ain't worth the hassle.

Mr. Nicholson, As you have done me the courtesy of a reply to my email regarding your anti-NRA screed (something that rarely occurs with others of your collectivist proclivities), I thought it only fitting to return the favor by answering your ill-formed and ill-informed opinions and questions by giving you an honest glimpse into the world view of those of your fellow citizens whom you so evidently despise. I do so in the hope that such knowledge might help you avoid personal culpability for the civil war that you evidently seek.

You begin by asking sarcastically, "So how do you really feel about background checks?" The Founders would have thought the entire idea to be repugnant and unworthy of a government that claims to represent a free people. Requiring the people to obtain the prior permission of the government to exercise a God-given, inalienable and natural right as codified in the Constitution would be preposterous to the Founders. One might as well require prior government permission to exercise a First Amendment right.

If the law-abiding must seek government approval then such rights are not rights at all and are subject to federal ban at any whim of the bureaucracy. THAT is the central tyranny of your proposal. A related offense to liberty is this: that government control of the private sale of firearms is designed to develop lists, not of firearms but of firearm owners. And the only reason for that is to facilitate confiscation at some future date and time.

For bureaucrats can only send armed men to the doors of people who are on their list. Indeed, this is what happened to the Jews and other "political undesirables" in Nazi Germany. All arms having been previously registered by the nominally democratic regime of the Weimar Republic, the Nazis had no trouble disarming their opponents. Ironically, the same Weimar socialists who had registered everyone's weapons (including their own) then found themselves disarmed by means of the same lists they had created.

Understand, then, that we have no intention of traveling that road. We will fight and we will kill in righteous self defense anyone who tries to take our liberty, our property and our lives.

You may think us crazy for doing so, for even thinking that we have the right to shirk our "responsibility to society" (to use your words), but the fact of the matter is that we are here, we are not changing our minds, we are done backing up to every unconstitutional infringement the federal government has imposed upon us since the National Firearms Act of 1934 and we will shoot the armed thugs operating under color of law that your proposed policy sends to our doors to compel our obedience.

Accept that as the ironclad fact and promise that it is, deal with it and act accordingly. For we will not forget those who solicited our deaths and the deaths of our families. We will not forget and history will not forgive. (Cf. Nuremberg, 1945-46.)

As for your second paragraph sneering at the possibility of successfully fighting the federal government backed by the military, my first reaction was, "Just who does this jerk think the military is made up of?" The military, my apparently clueless friend, is made up of OUR sons and daughters (especially the tip-of-the-spear units) NOT those of our pretended "betters" who send theirs to hothouse-lily Ivy League schools where they chant "Black Lives Matter" while safely ensconced in their anti-free speech "comfort zones." OUR sons and daughters are the ones who have spent the last decade getting combat experience in foreign wars. OURS not theirs. And which way do you suppose our adult children will be pointing their government-provided ordnance when the orders (YOUR orders that YOU solicited) come down to disarm Grandpa Jack or kill Uncle Billy as "enemies of the people"?

My second reaction to that paragraph was disbelief that anyone could be so ignorant of military history as to make such a stupid statement. Rambo was certainly fiction, but in the extensive chronicles of guerrillas versus governments, the governments lose almost as often as the insurgents and when they do, they lose spectacularly. You may ask the ghost of His Majesty's General Thomas Gage how his gun raids worked out for King George the Third. Which leads me to my third comment to that appallingly ignorant paragraph. I wondered aloud, "This moke really doesn't understand that there are people who have been studying and preparing and training to do that very thing since the original sin of Waco in 1993."

For it is the same regime that committed the massacre at Waco that you evidently trust with the power to circumscribe our liberties, the power to seize our property, even at the cost of our lives. No one in the federal government was ever called to account for Waco, nor for any of the scandals to date in the Obama administration beginning with, but certainly not limited to, Fast and Furious. Well I've got news for you. As I told Eric Holder in a letter more than six years ago, there will be no more free Wacos. The next federal bloody misadventure of that sort will get us all a nice, ghastly civil war. And it will be a war that we have been considering how to win for the past twenty years.

I refer you to an essay I wrote regarding the application of 4th Generation warfare in the context of just such a civil war as you seek to provoke. You will find it here. I would draw your particular attention to Bill Clinton's Rules of Engagement:

The thing is, once started, the regime will find it almost impossible to stop on any terms besides their own unconditional surrender as they would be fighting an enraged but dispersed network insurgency. It is likely that after a few weeks of such blood-letting, the administration will be unable to find anybody left alive with sufficient influence among the insurgents with whom they can negotiate an end to the horror. The fact of the matter is that they would have done their best to kill the folks they would need to stop what they started. And they will want to stop it, oh, yes, out of concern for their own miserable hides if nothing else. For they will have provoked a conflict that will not be directed at the war-fighters, the grunts, even those in the outnumbered federal police, but rather at the war-makers, i.e. themselves.

In this they have only Bill Clinton to blame. When the Philanderer in Chief, frustrated with Serbian intransigence in 1999, changed the rules of engagement to include the political leadership, news media and the intellectual underpinning of his enemy's war effort, he accidentally filed suit under the Law of Unintended Consequences. The Serbians knuckled under, yes. But the rest of the world took note, including (the Three Percent). I assure you, the appeal to the higher court of history in that case has yet to be decided. . .

Johnston is as wrong as he can be when comparing past history to 4th Generation warfare, distributed networks and leaderless resistance, especially as will be practiced in the United States if it ever goes to war with itself. He is wrong, but the powerful men and women he is writing for think he's right. Unfortunately for them, in the situation the administration would find itself after Waco Two, the "decapitation" strategy would for them more resemble Russian Roulette played with an automatic pistol. . .

I have asked this question before. They will fight to the last ATF agent or to the last oath-breaking soldier. Will they fight to the first senior bureaucrat, the second Congressman, the third newspaper editor, the fourth Senator, the fifth White House aide? Can they stand Bill Clinton's rules of engagement?

What does this have to do with you? Well, remember what I said above, "We will not forget those who solicited our deaths and the deaths of our families. We will not forget and history will not forgive."

One of my readers had this reaction to your email bleating, Borg-like, that "resistance is futile, you will be assimilated":

"I find it baffling that Bob thinks we'd waste a single shot on people in the military. What a horrid waste of time and ammo, engaging those who didn't cause the problem. People like Bob, who sent them, however. . ."

He left the hypothetical results of your proposal for civil war hanging in the air. Ho Chi Minh once said, "Cherish your enemies, for they teach you the best lessons." You begin to see, perhaps, just how right the old collectivist butcher was, especially when by your advocacy of the precursors of tyranny, you invoke the Law of Unintended Consequences upon yourself. This is a mission I took upon myself many years ago: I am trying to save lives here, one unthinking collectivist tyrant wannabe at a time. I hope you can appreciate that.

For we represent two different world views, you and we. Boil it down and you believe that people should serve the government. If you didn't, you wouldn't trust a corrupt regime willing commit Waco massacres with one scintilla of essential liberty. We believe, like the Founders, that government should serve the people -- that it should be accountable to the people and restrained by the rule of law under the Constitution of the Founder's Republic. Each side believes fervently in these mutually exclusive propositions. It is collectivism versus individualism. Throughout history, such fundamental divides have most often been decided by sanguinary wars of unspeakable ferocity. If you believe otherwise, you are whistling past the graveyard of our own history.

My advice? Try to understand that you are tap dancing in a minefield blindfolded. You are unthinkingly toying with titanic forces you barely recognize. The NRA, as perhaps you can more readily understand now, is truly the least of your worries. Consider Ho Chi Minh's advice. Perhaps the best counsel that I can offer you is that provided by the Sheriff in Silverado, who when asked by a townsman what was happening, advised, "Hide and watch."

In addition to the chemo ass-kicking, I very literally got blindsided while helping load some shelving for delivery to a friend. The warehouseman who was helping us was in a hurry, and backing up without looking as I attempted to walk around him, he knocked me ass over appetite onto the concrete. (It was like being struck by a swinging side of beef.) Hit with my entire weight on my left kneecap, then flipped back and smashed my head. The kneecap is going to give continuing trouble, I can tell, (I can walk on it if I keep it absolutely straight but it will not flex without giving way and transmitting excruciating pain) but I skipped going to the ER in the interest of the co-pay. My head merely has a knot raised on it, which is probably karma. I am committed to deliver the shelving this morning, so it will be afternoon before I get back to post. Sorry.

Subject: Re: When you get what you want, the NRA will be the least of your problems.

So how do you really feel about background checks?

Im (sic) always amazed at the hate some people have for their government. How did it come to that? If we really had a totalitarian government come to power, and the military was on their side do you really think that your small arms could hold off an armored attack? Rambo was fiction.

Why do you see tyranny in taking a few minutes to fill out a background check? Do you feel no responsibility to society at all? Or perhaps you have something to hide? If you could not pass a check I certainly understand your militancy.

Nothing in what support in that column would infringe upon your rights. When I have bought guns I went through a background check. Whey I got a carry permit I went through another check. I have my guns and I have my permit and no rights were harmed in the process.

Along with the more numerous threats and imprecations of those who disagreed with me on recent posts, I received a handful of supportive messages and emails such as the one below (as well as the Bible verse from Proverbs Chapter 18 in the header above). God bless you all for your kind words. I'm taking a lot of flak for those posts but I guess that means I'm over the target.

From: REDACTED

To: Mike Vanderboegh

Sent: Tue, Nov 17, 2015 8:11 am

Subject: Muslim Innocent Posts--Some Encouragement

Mike,

Good Morning. I just started perusing your blog this morning and saw some of the replies from the "all Muslims must die" crowd (and some of the barely less radical elements). I didn't read all of the comments because I've been reading enough of that around here from the former friend I'd mentioned before who's turned racial collectivist.

I know how discouraging it is to see this--especially for you as a founder of the Threeper movement--so I just wanted to add my voice to the other side. Thank you for standing up for the Biblical, moral position of defending the innocent. There are others of us out here who agree with you, and it's encouraging to us to read your words. It's, frankly, a long overdue breath of fresh air--no lies about a "religion of peace," no collectivist "kill them all" statements, but a leader actually saying "Yes their religion is wrong, but God didn't tell us to judge them for that, and we protect all innocent parties."

Keep up the good work. It encourages us, and it is right in the eyes of the only court which matters. Have a blessed day.

Asked by interviewer Bill Simmons of HBO if gun control will be the “dominant” issue on his agenda next year, Mr. Obama replied, “I hope so.”

“We have this weird habit in this culture of mourning and, you know, 48, 72 hours of wall-to-wall coverage, and then … suddenly we move on,” Mr. Obama said. “And I will do everything I can to make sure that there’s a sustained attention paid to this thing.”

Their plight involves a nightmarish catch-22. When Christians flee as refugees they cannot go to UN-run refugee camps because there they face the same persecution and terror from which they fled. If they are not in the refugee camps they are not included in the application process for asylum. The U.S. State Department knows this, but continues to allow the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to select refugees for asylum with no regard to the endangered Christians and other religious minorities. According to statements in the Sunday Express from an ISIS defector and aid workers in the UN camps, ISIS is sending teams of trained assassins disguised as refugees to kidnap and kill Christians.

And we’ve just learned that the State Department is poised to rule that Yazidis but not Christians are likely to be designated as victims of genocide in Iraq.

The blame is not just with the United Nations and the Obama administration. U.S. organizations who resettle refuges are also to blame. This includes Christian groups that resist any focus on Christian victims of ISIS, and oppose actions by Congress to welcome not just economic migrants but also Christians and other religious minorities victimized by ISIS.

ISIS is the upshot of anarchy, in other words: a situation which obtains when a populated territory is without administration, so that warrior bands prevent anyone from feeling secure. The toppling of a secular Baathist regime in Iraq in 2003 and a revolt against another secular Baathist regime in Syria in 2011 reduced those countries to dust and chaos. Baathist totalitarianism, followed by such chaos, meant that only a movement equally extreme in its own right could take root and flourish in the vacuum. Thus, whatever strategy we follow against ISIS must have as its endgame a plan to out-administer it, or else anarchy will simply return and ISIS along with it.

"Throngs of protesters converged around fellow students who had not joined in their long march," The Review reported. "They confronted students who bore ‘symbols of oppression' such as ‘gangster hats' and Beats-brand headphones. The flood of demonstrators opened the doors of study spaces with students reviewing for exams. Those who tried to close their doors were harassed further. One student abandoned the study room and ran out of the library. The protesters followed her out of the library, shouting obscenities the whole way."

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Sorry, but all I could muster today was releasing comments (and deleting the more blood thirsty ones from folks who don't believe that Muslim babies are innocent). At present, this post represents a new SSI record, with 89 published comments and probably three dozen or so direct threats of violence to Muslim babies and yours truly for posting it. Now I'm going through the email backup. Will try to have more stuff for tomorrow, but then, it's almost tomorrow at the moment anyway.

How many are willing to kill a Kurd, the predominant number of which are Sunni Muslim, even if they are pro-American and fighting against the butchers of ISIS? They're Muslim, right? How many are willing to kill a Shia woman, raped and victimized by ISIS monsters, to finish their job simply because she too is Muslim? C'mon. Why don't you extend your sterile and often anonymous demands that "all Muslims must die" to these folks? Don't you want to be philosophically consistent? Or are you prepared to agree with me that there ARE Muslims innocent of any crime and thus not deserving of death at our hands?

I am not arguing about the validity of their faith. I am a Christian, but I also understand that absent the burden of protecting the innocent -- ALL innocents -- from attack by collectivists of any ilk, including Muslim religious collectivists, it is not up to me to execute God's judgment upon someone simply because of their faith, however mistaken it is. Even if you do not share my faith, what part of belief that the Constitution extends to everyone regardless of race, color or religion are you willing to tear up? And if you are, how are you different from the collectivist monsters of every ilk that we claim to fight?

I'd like to know. Right here. Right now. How many of you are volunteering to be baby killers?

My reply via email directly to the constitutional scofflaw (also posted as a comment at the site, but I doubt it makes it):

-----Original Message-----

From: georgemason1776@aol.com

To: bobncolumn@gmail.com

Sent: Mon, Nov 16, 2015 11:30 am

Subject: When you get what you want, the NRA will be the least of your problems.

My dear pathetic Mr. Nicholson,

Provoking a bloody civil war by insisting that the federal government take over the private sale of arms among the previously peaceable and law-abiding ("universal background checks") and making us all felons with nothing left to lose seems a strange way to reduce violence. Indeed, when you get what you want, the NRA will be the least of your problems. Currently, every law passed in the states since Sandy Hook has been nullified and negated by armed civil disobedience and non-compliance, and that has nothing to do with the perfumed princes of the NRA bureaucracy in Fairfax. Indeed, the politicians of these states don't know whether to defecate or go blind, since they are coming to the conclusion that to enforce such laws will cost them personally.

How then will you enforce your appetite for our traditional liberty, our property rights with the iron fist of state-sanctioned violence at the cost of our lives if we tell you and your state minions to go to hell at the muzzles of our rifles? Tell us now how many of our deaths is it worth to you to enforce your tyrannical will upon us? 100 thousand? A million? Ten million? And what will you do when we conclude that your attacks require not just the willingness to die for our principles, but the necessity to kill in righteous self defense of them as well? Do not extrapolate from your own moral cowardice and assume that just because you pass a law that we will all roll over and willingly submit to being slaves of the federal government. And do you suppose that we will not remember who sought our demise and that of our families by advocacy of such tyranny?

Be careful what you wish for, as the ancient Chinese proverb warns, you may get it. But if you are determined to try to sate your appetite for social control by your plan, then kindly have the courage of your convictions and accompany the first raid parties to our doors. We can then introduce you to the ironclad Law of Unintended Consequences. If not, then kindly shut up your impotent squeaking, you and your collectivist ilk are boring the rest of us.

Thus says the Lord: “Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and there speak this word, and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, O king of Judah, you who sit on the throne of David, you and your servants and your people who enter these gates! Thus says the Lord: “Execute judgment and righteousness, and deliver the plundered out of the hand of the oppressor. Do no wrong and do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, or the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place. For if you indeed do this thing, then shall enter the gates of this house, riding on horses and in chariots, accompanied by servants and people, kings who sit on the throne of David. But if you will not hear these words, I swear by Myself,” says the Lord, “that this house shall become a desolation.”’” (Verses 1-5).

For thus says the Lord to the house of the king of Judah: “You are Gilead to Me, The head of Lebanon; Yet I surely will make you a wilderness, Cities which are not inhabited. I will prepare destroyers against you, Everyone with his weapons; They shall cut down your choice cedars And cast them into the fire. (Verses 6 & 7)

And many nations will pass by this city; and everyone will say to his neighbor, ‘Why has the Lord done so to this great city?’ Then they will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God, and worshiped other gods and served them.’” (Verses 8 &9)

Or, if you prefer your moral guidance with a little less Old Testament, try this quote from Lord Moran:

“I contend that fortitude in war has its roots in morality; that selection is a search for character and that war itself is but one more test — the supreme and final test if you will — of character. Courage can be judged apart from danger only if the social significance and meaning of courage is known to us; namely that a man of character in peace becomes a man of courage in war. He cannot be selfish in peace and yet be unselfish in war. Character, as Aristotle taught, is a habit, the daily choice of right and wrong; it is a moral quality which grows to maturity in peace and is not suddenly developed on the outbreak of war. For war, in spite of what we have heard to the contrary, has no power to transform, it merely exaggerates the good and evil that are in us, till it is plain for all to read; it cannot change; it exposes.” – Lord Moran, in The Anatomy of Courage (1945)

And if even that doesn't make an impression on you, try this on for size. By targeting innocent Muslims, you are playing right into the hands of civilization's bloody-handed enemies: "The Islamic State’s trap for Europe."

"The Islamic State’s strategy is to polarize Western society — to 'destroy the grayzone,' as it says in its publications. The group hopes frequent, devastating attacks in its name will provoke overreactions by European governments against innocent Muslims, thereby alienating and radicalizing Muslim communities throughout the continent. . . The strategy is explicit. The Islamic State explained after the January attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine that such attacks 'compel the Crusaders to actively destroy the grayzone themselves. . . . Muslims in the West will quickly find themselves between one of two choices, they either apostatize . . . or they [emigrate] to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution from the Crusader governments and citizens.' The group calculates that a small number of attackers can profoundly shift the way that European society views its 44 million Muslim members and, as a result, the way European Muslims view themselves. Through this provocation, it seeks to set conditions for an apocalyptic war with the West."

"Everyone in the French government is shocked. No thinking man is shocked. This was the inevitable deliverance of a ruling class who hates us. America is the product of Continental and Scottish Calvinism, unquestionably a Christian nation. The current administration, along with ISIS, hates who we are. This is coming to America – it is already in America – and it is our responsibility to be ready for it."

"I wonder if Tom is concerned enough about the black community to cause an American civil war over gun confiscations, or to see a government that has lost any semblance of control because no one observes its laws? Does he really think we’re going to go along with more gun control? Finally, I am left wondering if Tom wrote this piece when he was partly nuts or bigtime nuts? For the record, I’m not nuts."

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.